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Blog Post
August 27, 2021
God, I love cricket. Even when one team is miles, miles, ahead there’s drama and intrigue to keep you interested. Though England’s performance on the first couple of days has once again provided a stern lesson to the commentariat that variance neglect and over-interpretation of the win/lose binary a...
Blog Post
August 26, 2021
Our series on the big challenges and opportunities for developing countries over the next couple of decades has so far largely focused on specific sectors: agriculture, health and finance. The fourth took a different tack, considering instead what we should—and should not—learn from the most dramati...
Blog Post
August 20, 2021
Normally when a policy goes awry, you have to really search for the evidence to prove it. It’s pretty rare that things go wrong quite as quickly, viscerally and heartbreakingly as they are in Afghanistan right now. This is the place where I usually insert a pithy joke, but my well of amusement has r...
Blog Post
August 05, 2021
The case against the cuts to the UK’s aid budget is well-rehearsed. We know they damage the UK’s contribution to its own priorities, that the stated aim to revivify the budget when “fiscal conditions allow” is barely coherent, and that it leaves a laundry list of good causes going wanting.
Blog Post
July 30, 2021
That was a well-timed week off: we arrived in Cornwall in glorious sunshine and left just as the rain clouds (and summer holiday visitors) began to gather. In between, there was an inhuman quantity of fish and chips and pasties, scallops barbecued on the shell, “swimming” expeditions that involved s...
Blog Post
July 16, 2021
Sorry for the unannounced radio silence last week – I went on leave and forgot to announce my absence; no doubt the absence of the links was marked by wailing, a virtual vigil and panicked phone calls. Next week will be the same, and I’ll be taking time off through the summer, so I may disappear wit...
Blog Post
July 02, 2021
Can I start by being a grinch? Every few years, England win a football match and the whole country loses its marbles: mass outbreaks of hugging– in England, no less, a country where the aversion to voluntary physical contact with strangers is so great that only something as virulent as Coronavi...